INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 173 



matobia brumata, which he calls the most ruinous of the whole, 

 are all more or less injurious to fruit trees generally.- In the 

 north of France, as we learn from Mr. Westwood, one of these 

 caterpillars, that of the small ermine moth ( Yponomeuta pa- 

 della) is often so numerous as to defoliate the apple trees by 

 the road sides for miles.^ Three species of beetles also, Rhyn- 

 chites alliarice, which in the larva state bores into the young 

 shoots, and Nemoicus oblongus and Phyllopertha horticola, 

 which attack the leaves as perfect insects, join their lepidop- 

 terous brethren in Germany in a general assault on fruit trees. 



If we quit the orchard and fruit-garden for a walk in our 

 plantations and groves, we shall still be forced to witness the 

 sad effects of insect devastation ; and when we see, as some- 

 times happens, the hedges and trees entirely deprived of their 

 foliage, and ourselves of the shade we love from the fervid 

 beam of the noonday sun ; when the singing birds have 

 deserted them; and all their music, which has so often 

 enchanted us by its melody, variety, and sweetness, has 

 ceased — we shall be tempted in our hearts to wish the whole 

 insect race was blotted from the page of creation. Numerous 

 are the agents employed in this work of destruction. Amongst 

 the beetles, various cockchafers {Melolontha vulgaris, Amplii- 

 malla solstitialis, and Phyllopertha horticola) in their perfect 

 state act as conspicuous a part in injuring the trees, as their 

 grubs do in destroying the herbage. Besides the leaves of 

 fruit-trees, they devour those of the sycamore, the lime, the 

 beech, the willow, and the elm. They are sometimes, es- 

 pecially the common one, astonishingly numerous. MoulFet 

 relates, (but one would think that there must be some mis- 

 take in the date, since they are never so early in their 

 appearance,) that on the 24th of February, 1574, such a 

 number of them fell into the river Severn as to stop the 

 wheels of the water-mills.^ It is also recorded in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, that in 1688 they filled the hedges 

 and trees of part of the county of Galway in such infinite 

 numbers, as to cling to each other in clusters like bees when 



1 Kollar, on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &e. 190 — 229. 



2 Loudon's Gardener's Mag. Oct. 1837. 



3 MoufFet, 160. 



